1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an IC (integrated circuit) card and a financial transaction processing system using the IC card, and particularly, relates to an IC card in which data identifying a specific financial institution and a program for transaction processing procedures to be performed in a terminal are stored.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Presently, a magnetic card such as so-called cash card and credit card has been widely used for payment, deposit, transfer and the like through an online system in financial institutions such as a bank and a credit company. Data for identifying a customer, such as a secret number, is magnetically stored in the magnetic card. When a transaction is performed, a customer goes to a bank at which he has a bank account, with such magnetic card, where he inserts his card into a terminal such as an automatic teller machine (ATM) and a cash dispenser (CD) installed therein and enters into the terminal the data necessary for transactions, such as a secret number, a kind of transaction and a transaction amount by operating inputting means, such as a keyboard, in accordance with predetermined procedures. The information of secret number read out by the terminal and the information of each of transactions entered into the terminal by a customer are transmitted to a center of the bank, and in response to the information, a center file is renewed and then an instruction indicating that the transaction is to be performed is provided to the terminal. Thus, any transaction is permitted to be performed between the customer and the terminal.
Recently, many kinds of transactions can be executed by means of an online system and may include transfer transactions, which are not so often used, but which can be expected to be increasingly used. Accordingly, a terminal such as an ATM must include functions and programs which can respond to all kinds of transaction processings, which results in an increase of the load of each of the terminals, in terms of function. In addition, since the presently used magnetic card has only a function identifying a customer, the customer must obey a predetermined transaction processing procedure required by the terminal at the time of performing a transaction, which means that there are increased selecting factors and operating procedures for the customer operating the terminal. Therefore, since it is expected that it may be difficult for a customer to operate a terminal, display means such as a CRT is provided in the terminal as auxiliary means so that the procedure or order of transaction and selecting factors can be displayed to the customer. However, such auxiliary means have some limitatins and, particularly, a customer who is not so familiar with the terminal has difficulty in making transaction operations within a short time-period, resulting in inefficiency of transaction processing.
Under the circumstances, it is desirable that at least one program for transaction processing procedures in a terminal, which has been conventionally stored in the terminal, is stored in a card and it is also desirable for convenience of a customer's operation that, if and when a predetermined program is not stored in a card at the time of performing a transaction, indication of an impossible transaction is provided to a customer.
In addition, it is also desirable that a transaction can be performed only when a transaction processing corresponding to the program stored in the IC card is one of transaction processings which the terminal can execute, and otherwise the transaction processing can not be further continued.
Furthermore, the program for transaction processing procedures is sometimes partly renewed. For example, the data for determining an effective time-period of a card is parly renewed and hence, in general, the program for transaction processing procedures which the terminal can execute must be a newest one.
Accordingly, it is desirable that if and when a version of data of the program stored in the IC card coincides with the version of data of the program which the terminal can execute, the program stored in the IC card is read out and the transaction requested by a customer can be executed based on the read program, and if there is inconsistency, a transaction is discontinued and a customer is informed that the program has not been renewed, or the terminal can rewrite the program stored in the IC card to the newest program the terminal can execute, and thereafter, the transaction can be made in accordance with the rewritten program.
However, a conventional magnetic card has a limitation with respect to storage capacity, that is, there is a problem that only information concerning a single financial body can be stored in a single card and hence the above described various kinds of data can not be stored.